From Tour de France: the carbohydrate revolution

First of two sessions dedicated to nutrition and hydration on the bike, on the eve of the Tour de France. In this episode we talk about food: how the way of eating on the bike has changed and what someone who rides for passion can truly borrow from a WorldTour athlete. Next week we will focus on hydration.

There is a misunderstanding that accompanies every enthusiast: thinking that professional athletes’ nutrition strategies belong to another planet, made of laboratories, isotopes and numbers impossible to replicate.

The truth is much simpler. Many of the principles that today push performance to the highest levels — and that in these very weeks we will see at work at the Tour de France — are perfectly transferable to the everyday reality of those who ride their bike to feel good, have fun and maybe improve a little.

We talked about it with Laura Martinelli, Lead Performance Nutritionist of the WorldTour Team Jayco Alula and Liv AlUla Jayco, who has been working in professional cycling since 2013 and who in 2018 brought the same expertise into tennis, where she follows French number one Arthur Fils.

A double experience that allows her to shift concepts from one discipline to another and, above all, to translate them for those who do not live in an exasperated competitive environment. Because our starting point is clear: we are not speaking to professionals, but to passionate cyclists who seek a balanced approach to sports practice.

Compared to ten years ago, the way of eating on the bike has changed radically. “When I started, in 2013, riders barely knew the difference between carbohydrates and proteins,” Martinelli says. “On paper it’s not that long ago, but from the perspective of sports nutrition it feels like another lifetime.”

Today the situation is reversed: riders are “increasingly knowledgeable, increasingly educated,” to the point that even youth categories already distinguish between a plate of pasta and a steak, and between supplementation that fills deficiencies and supplementation that genuinely improves recovery and performance. The most important achievement is cultural: understanding the difference between nutrition, meaning food, and supplementation, meaning integration.

And it is precisely this solid foundation that makes it possible to work on details. That’s when concepts such as macro‑periodization, which differentiates eating habits between winter and summer, and micro‑periodization, which adapts nutrition to the week’s training sessions, come into play. It’s not about making things complicated, but about avoiding eating the same way regardless of what you do on the bike.

If there is one factor that has pushed recent performances upward, it is carbohydrate support during effort. The numbers clearly show the revolution. “When I started studying sports nutrition, the goal was 80 grams of carbohydrates per hour,” Martinelli explains. “Today athletes manage even double that.” At the Tour de France, riders reach intakes between 120 and 180 per hour.

But it is important to understand the meaning of this race to grams. The goal is not only to push more watts in competition: “Eating better and eating more while riding also improves recovery. Riders recover more effectively and manage to train more and better: it’s a virtuous cycle,” the nutritionist notes. For amateurs, the lesson is not to copy those numbers — which require a trained gut and very different contexts — but to grasp the principle: keeping the tanks full pays off, during and after.

And this is where one of the most fascinating and least known concepts comes in. “The gut must be trained exactly like the legs,” Martinelli says. The season is built in winter, and those months serve not only the legs but also to raise the absorption threshold.

“Some people are born absorbing carbohydrates better or worse,” she explains, “but that threshold can be trained significantly.” The method is gradual and based on common sense: specific products and, above all, an even distribution during the ride, to reduce the risk of gastrointestinal issues. And it applies to everything: “You do it with carbohydrates, but you also do it with fluids and sodium.” No one is born able to absorb 100 grams of carbohydrates per hour. You get there one ride at a time, far from races during the preparation months.

There are sophisticated tests, such as the one that uses drinks with carbon atoms marked at the isotopic level to measure how many carbohydrates the athlete is actually able to oxidize. But these procedures are not very practical, and Martinelli gladly shifts the focus elsewhere: “Rather than trusting numbers, I would trust sensations. Riders and amateurs spend a great deal of time alone with themselves: they know themselves extremely well.

Simple signals say a lot. If too many carbohydrates are consumed and remain in the gut unabsorbed, gastrointestinal discomfort may occur: a sign of excess.

At the opposite end is the classic sensation of “empty legs,” linked to low glycogen, which indicates the reverse. “In modern cycling, the risk is rarely that of eating too little: hunger knocks no longer exist,” she notes. The balance point lies in avoiding both sensations on progressively longer rides.

We have seen how the cyclist’s “fuel” has evolved and why training the gut matters as much as training the legs. But there is a second pillar, equally decisive, especially when temperatures rise: hydration.

Next week we will discover with Laura Martinelli how to calculate one’s fluid needs using only a scale, why the “camel technique” often doesn’t work, who the real protagonist of sports hydration is, and the three golden rules to take home

The information contained in this article is for educational purposes and does not replace personalized nutritional advice. To set up a tailored strategy, it is always advisable to consult a professional.